Above and Be­yond

A film to cel­e­brate the 50th an­niver­sary of a beloved sci­ence-fic­tion se­ries is kind of a big deal. Es­pe­cially when you’re moving into a di­rec­tor’s chair re­cently va­cated by none other than JJ Abrams. It’s fair to say the pres­sure was on Justin Lin, but the di­rec­tor has come up trumps with Star Trek Be­yond. What makes the end re­sult even more im­pres­sive is the timescale that the Fast and Fu­ri­ous man and as­sorted crew were given to put the film, partly shot in Dubai, to­gether. Lin told joblo.com: “It was 18 months from idea to this. That's when I got a call from JJ. (He said) ‘what do you think about Star Trek, do you want to take over?’ I had three days, be­cause I was shoot­ing, to think it over. “At that point I thought about the lo­gis­ti­cal chal­lenge. As great as it was to take over for the 50th an­niver­sary, we were shoot­ing from noth­ing at six months.” Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Sal­dana and Karl Ur­ban do a great job por­tray­ing James T Kirk, Spock, Uhuru and Bones from the orig­i­nal TV se­ries in a screen­play writ­ten by Si­mon Pegg and Doug Jung. It was these char­ac­ters that per­suaded Lin to take on the big project from Abrams, who was work­ing on Star Wars: The Force Awak­ens. He ex­plains: “My de­ci­sion was very emo­tional and per­sonal. I'm at a good place in my ca­reer and I don’t have to take a job. But at my par­ents’ for din­ner, I re­alised how big a part of me Star Trek was. From eight to 18, that hour was fam­ily time, the only time I got to spend with my mum and dad. I thought okay, this is the only fran­chise I would do this for.” Star Trek Be­yond is out now. Read our re­view at 7days.ae